The Pride Feasted On Kansas City’s Fear

The Orlando Pride did not become the first team in NWSL history to collect 60 points for any one reason. On any given day, you could assign credit to Barbra Banda's attacking ferocity, Marta's ageless orchestration, or the league's stingiest defense. But in order to make it through an entire season with only two losses, you need the reliable presence of all three of those things, and more. Truly great teams are great as a matter of course. This is something that the Kansas City Current learned on Sunday, as they fell to the Pride, 3-2, in the league semifinal.

The final score conceals the convincing nature of Orlando's victory, which was claimed in the 82nd minute through an act of eye-watering beauty crafted by the best player in history. Everything that happened after Marta scored to give the Pride a 3-1 lead—16 minutes of stoppage time, the Current getting a goal back thanks to a fluky handball in the box, Banda leaving the game with an injury—may as well not have happened, because the game had already been defined for good by Marta's feat:

There are goals that dazzle and inspire, and then there are goals that conquer. That was the word that immediately came to mind when Marta, having just passed the ball into the net while dropping four players to the ground, turned her back to the goal and roared. In that brief moment, everything—the fans, her opponents, the game of soccer itself—belonged to Marta. She had just proven that it will take more than 38 years to dull the magic that has always been in her feet, and that if all 11 of Kansas City's players had been in the box, she would have chopped them all down. She had scored a goal, and a pretty one at that, but she'd also rendered her opponents panic-stricken and helpless. That's how you conquer a game.

Marta served up the game's most cinematic and memorable moment, but her teammates were the ones who set her up for that legacy-enriching goal. The Pride's league-best defense did the hard work of shepherding 20-goal scorer Temwa Chawinga away from too many dangerous areas, and Banda applied ceaseless pressure to KC's backline. Chawinga may have ultimately left Banda in the dust in their golden boot race, but Sunday's game was a reminder that Banda's game is slightly more textured than her rival's. The Zambian isn't one to let the game drift away from her; where other attackers blessed with her speed and finishing ability might be content to spend 90 minutes lurking off the nearest defender's shoulder waiting for the perfect pass to pounce on, Banda insists on seeking out the action. She spent the first 52 minutes of the game pressing from the front, dropping deep to pick up the ball, and demanding passes to her feet while pinning defenders to her back.

In the 53rd minute, all of that work paid off. As she had already done several times before, Banda sealed her defender in the box and asked for a ball to her feet. Every time she'd done so previously, she'd used her strength to keep the defender on her back and easily controlled the pass. This time, however, Kayla Sharples resolved not to be outmuscled; the defender threw a desperate leg at the ball, allowing herself to be rolled out of the play and presenting Banda with a clean shot at goal.

This goal, the one that put Orlando up 2-1, was the culmination of nearly an hour's worth of manipulation. In Banda and Marta the Pride have two stars who understand that the best players are also the best manipulators. Sometimes this is obvious—put the ball at Marta's feet with four defenders around her and she'll just chop and chop and chop until she's felled them all—but Banda's puppeteering on Sunday was of a more subtle variety. Every time she chased after a defender who was just trying to make a simple back pass, or dropped into midfield, or rolled a defender who got too tight, she was giving her opponents something else to be frightened of. The best thing an attacker can do is put defenders in a state of worry, because worry leads panic, and panic leads to goals.

The Pride will have a new set of opponents to try to fluster on Saturday, when they meet the Washington Spirit in the championship game. A winner-takes-all game is meant to be a scary proposition to a team like the Pride, one at risk of having its history-making regular season rendered meaningless by one slip in form. The Pride have sailed through two such games now, though, and have yet to show any fear or lack of control. Why start now?